1. Field of the Invention
The claimed invention relates generally to well drilling and servicing equipment, and more specifically to portable rigs for handling pipe strings when making up and disconnecting long strings of pipe used in a bore hole during operations that are carried out in the exploration and production of petroleum and other fluids and minerals from substantial depths below the earth's surface.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Production wells must be worked over from time-to-time due to either faulty downhole equipment or to some unusual or adverse well condition. For example, if the production string is damaged or leaking, it may be necessary to pull the tubing from the casing and replace it with new string. In a gas lift installation, the gas lift valves may not be in good working condition, and it therefore may be necessary to run exchange gas lift valves into the well. When tubing becomes plugged with sand, it is necessary to insert a tool such as a macaroni work string into the pipe to ream out or flush out the material clogging the flow of oil through the pipe. Other remedial service operations include gravel packs, fishing jobs, plug backs, recompletion requiring pulling and reinstallation of production tubing, drill-out of cement plugs, running sand screens and sand packing.
When such service operations become necessary, a portable installation called a workover rig is brought to the well site and set up. Generally, these rigs consist of a derrick or mast which supports pulleys or block and tackle arrangements that are operable to pull the pipe string from the well. These prior art workover rigs are usually heavy and difficult to erect and further often have the limited operational capability of only being able to hoist or pull pipe from a well without the capability of snubbing or pushing pipe back into the well. Since these conventional workover rigs cannot develop a downward force to push a string of pipe into the well, in such operations the well must necessarily always be under control or "dead", as is known in the art. This may require a preparatory operation of injecting a suitable substance such as mud or "kill" fluid into the well to maintain sufficient column weight of fluid to resist the pressure within the well which is tending to force the tubing out. However, it is usually desirable to carry out the workover operations without resorting to the injection of "kill" fluid into the well since the well may be lost if the formation is damaged because of the presence of the workover "kill" fluid. In such "killing" workover operations, there is a very high risk that the productivity of the subsurface formation may decline so severely after killing the well that the well must be abandoned.
An overriding concern in the construction of workover rigs is to get the necessary equipment into and out of the well as rapidly and safely as is economically possible. This concern has led to the development of a portable well service rig having a transportable mast or derrick. Before the invention of the first portable well service unit, it was necessary to leave the drilling derrick in place over the well for use in future well service operations. The portable well service rig eliminated the need for a permanent derrick and thus materially reduced overall well service costs. The early portable rigs, however, were unloaded in a heap and later sorted out, and then assembled without any definite plans therefore consuming a substantial amount of time in rigging up. Even when unitized and transported on pallets, a significant amount of time was required for transporting, rigging up and dismantling the palletized equipment. In the palletized approach, the field assembly and erection of the mast, mast support structure and reeving of the hoist cable caused expensive but unavoidable delays. Therefore recent improvements to conventional portable workover rigs have focused on changes which simplify the operations of transporting, rigging up and dismantling.
One of the problems associated with the development of the portable workover rig is that of providing sufficient working space below the mast floor while limiting the mast and its supporting base to dimensions which permit its transportation across public highways. A working space must be provided below the mast floor in order that the mast can be supported vertically above and engage well head equipment which may extend as much as eight to ten feet above the elevation of the rig platform deck. The minimum height of the mast is determined primarily by the length of the sections of pipe string added to or removed from the pipe already in the well bore. However, if the mast is so high that its length and height clearance when in a horizontal position on the workover rig exceeds the limits allowed by the state, the mast must be at least partially disassembled or must be telescoped. Most wells have tubing sections which are in the range of thirty-six to forty feet long, so that the construction of a transportable mast assembly having a stroke for accomodating the removal or insertion of such tubing sections poses no problem insofar as complying with state highway regulations.
As mentioned above, the conventional practice has been to provide a mast having telescoping sections or having sections which must be separately assembled and erected on site. To provide ample clearance for the well head equipment, the mast floor has been elevated above the ground level by placing it on a mast substructure carried by the rig base platform. This substructure is normally fabricated of heavy structural steel in a massive weldment which must be separately transported. The loads it must bear are greater than those born by the mast, since the substructure must support not only the weight of the derrick with its pipe string load, but other loads, such as the rotary table and draw works as well. However, the length and height of the separate mast support base when combined with the reclining mast may in some cases exceed highway limits, so that separate transportation, field assembly and erection are required. Most conventional rigs provide separate support base and mast sections which may be unbolted and separately transported to provide the short lengths allowed for highway travel. However, additional rigging up and tear down time is required for such arrangements.
Other important considerations involved in the construction of portable workover rigs are the strength and stability of the mast. The mast must be constructed to safely carry all loads which will ever be used in the well over which it is placed. This is the collapse resistance caused by vertical loading, or the dead load capacity of the mast. The largest dead load which will be imposed on the derrick will normally be the heaviest string of production tubing run in the well. However, this heaviest string of tubing will not be the greatest strain placed on the mast. The maximum vertical load which will ever be imposed on the mast will probably be the result of pulling on equipment, such as drill pipe or casing, that has become stuck in the hole. Therefore it must be considered that, sometime during the useful life of the mast, severe vertical strain will be placed on it because the equipment has become stuck in the hole. Therefore the mast and its intermediate support platform must be constructed to withstand and react loads which will exceed the capacity of the hoist line which will be used on the rig.
The mast must be also designed to withstand the maximum wind loads to which it will be subjected. The horizontal force of the wind acting on the mast and production tubing is usually counteracted by using from one to three guy wires along each leg of the mast which are attached to "dead man" anchors located some distance from the mast. A "dead man" anchor is made from a short length of large pipe, a concrete block, or a short section of timber, which is buried in the ground to provide an anchor for the guy wire. A substantial amount of time and labor is expended in setting up the "dead man" support lines. Additionally, when carrying out workover operations off shore, there is no practical way to anchor the guy lines. A suitable structural alternative for the guy wire supports is necessary for reacting the wind loads, and the snubbing forces must also be reacted in order to drive production tubing into an offshore well against the downhole pressures which may be encountered. Therefore there is a continuing interest in improving the design of support substructure for free-standing masts which do not require guy wires for support.
As a result of the many improvements to portable workover rigs, such vehicles now transport practically all the necessary servicing equipment directly to the field locations and when servicing has been completed, remove the necessary equipment to another well in need of service in the same field or in a different field miles away. Thus the equipment necessary to service a number of wells each having different service requirements has been greatly reduced, and consequently the labor and cost, as well as the amount of equipment has correspondingly dropped. However, there still remains considerable interest in the provision of more efficient and simplified machines in order that the job of well servicing in general may be carried out efficiently and at reasonable cost.